Warner Bros. Discovery Disappears Games People Already Purchased
And here we go again. It’s time for another abject lesson in how you don’t actually own the things you’re “buying” in this here digital age. We’ve covered a ton of these stories at this point, obviously. But there are examples of people learning that they don’t actually own the thing they spent their money on… and then there are examples. This one is certainly one of the more egregious case studies in that respect.
Adult Swim Games is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery and has published a bunch of games that are available in several gaming marketplaces, such as on Steam and on console marketplaces. These games were created by a bunch of development studios, some of them small one-person shop indie outfits. Well, Warner Bros. Discovery has apparently decided to “retire” a bunch of those games. Importantly, this means that some specific versions of these games will be gone, even from those who already bought them. And, while the publishers in some cases will be allowed to re-publish the games themselves, it won’t be in a format that will transfer all of the data and achievements players have amassed, despite it being trivially easy for WBD to transfer those accounts if it wanted to.
In a comment on that Ars post, Matt Kain, developer of Adult Swim Games’ Fist Puncher, noted that they had received the same “retired” notice from WBD. “When we requested that Warner Bros simply transfer the game over to our studio’s Steam publisher account so that the game could stay active, they said no. The transfer process literally takes a minute to initiate (look up “Transferring Applications” in the Steamworks documentation), but their rep claimed they have simply made the universal decision not to transfer the games to the original creators,” Kain wrote.
Kain noted that his game’s players “have 10+ years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. which will all be lost.” In addition, Kickstarter backers of the game will lose access to a game in which they have a cameo, and his firm, Team2Bit, would likely face backlash if they re-released the game under their own account, forcing a second purchase from some customers.
WBD has also told developers that it has no plans of selling these titles in their original forms in the future, either. So, the company is going to disappear these titles but still retain control over them in their original form such that they can’t be released elsewhere or by the developers in their purchased-form. And all of the stuff that comes along with playing them for gamers is gone, too. Why?
Probably for tax write-off purposes.
Adult Swim Games has not published a game since 2020. Its parent company has said it was due for a “tough” quarter, and perhaps year, as its tentpole game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League failed to find a sustaining audience. On a broader level, WBD has been conspicuously culling titles and removing access to its content, sometimes in pursuit of tax advantages. The firm has killed and hidden away films including Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, removed canceled shows and well-regarded animation and kids’ content, and, just this week, closed down gaming and anime studio Rooster Teeth.
And so legitimate buyers of this content who thought it meant they had some actual ownership of it, or investment into it for rewards in the case of crowd-sourced titles, are simply shit out of luck. And they don’t have to be. WBD could transfer these games to developer-owned publisher accounts. But for whatever the real reason is, and it’s most certainly not “logistical” reasons, WBD just won’t.
It’s probably past time at this point for there to be a digital consumer rights conversation about this new world we live in where our purchases live at the pleasure of the seller’s decision to let us keep them. Because the current reality is simply not sustainable.